Professor Timothy Barker
- Professor of Media Technology and Aesthetics (Theatre, Film & Television Studies)
email:
Timothy.Barker@glasgow.ac.uk
School of CCA, Gillmorehill Centre, 9 University Avenue, Glasgow G12 8QQ
Research interests
Tim’s research involves the critical analysis of digital technology in contemporary audio-visual culture. Working in the tradition of media archaeology, and spanning the fields of media theory, art theory and the philosophy of technology, Tim conducts research that involves considerations of aesthetics in relation to the technological infrastructure of image making. In particular, he has explored the ways that both old and new media technologies have facilitated the potential to generate new experiences and philosophical concepts of time. His first book Time and the Digital (Dartmouth, 2012) traces connections between the philosophy of time in the work of Gilles Deleuze and A.N. Whitehead and uses this to explore questions of time, history and memory in relation to digital aesthetics, communication technology and contemporary interactive art. His second book, Against Transmission: Media Philosophy and the Engineering of Time (Bloomsbury, 2018) pairs archive research into the history of media technology with philosophical inquiry in order to explore the ways that experiences of time have been engineered through the history of measurement and storage media.
Publications
2023
Barker, T. (2023) Unplayable games: time and digital culture. Kunsttexte, 2023(2),
Barker, T. (2023) Media temporalities and the technical image. In: de Vaujanay, F.-X., Holt, R. and Grandazzi, A. (eds.) Organisation as Time: Technology, Power and Politics. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781009297257
Barker, T. (2023) Michel Serres and the philosophy of technology. Theory, Culture and Society, (doi: 10.1177/02632764221140825) (Early Online Publication)
2021
Barker, T. (2021) The transcendental and the agonistic: a media philosophy perspective. Foundations of Science, 27(2), pp. 521-525. (doi: 10.1007/s10699-020-09761-2)
Barker, T. and Korolkova, M. (Eds.) (2021) Miscommunications: Errors, Mistakes, Media. Series: Thinking media. Bloomsbury Academic: New York ; London. ISBN 9781501363856
Barker, T. (2021) Post-communication theory. In: Barker, T. and Korolkova, M. (eds.) Miscommunication: Mistakes, Errors, Media. Series: Thinking media. Bloomsbury Academic: New York ; London, pp. 46-60. ISBN 9781501363856
Barker, T. and Korolkova, M. (2021) Introduction: bad operators. In: Barker, T. and Korolkova, M. (eds.) Miscommunication: Mistakes, Errors, Media. Series: Thinking media. Bloomsbury Academic: New York ; London, pp. 1-22. ISBN 9781501363856
Barker, T. (2021) Michel Serres’ messengers. Media Theory, 5(1), pp. 163-184.
2020
Barker, T. (2020) Between emergence and emergencies: an introduction to the special issue ‘Media, Materiality, and Emergency’. MAST: The Journal of Media Art Study and Theory, 1(2), pp. 3-22.
Barker, T. (2020) Special Issue: Media, Materiality and Emergency [Guest Editor]. MAST: The Journal of Media Art Study and Theory, 1(2),
Barker, T. (2020) Media philosophy. MAST: The Journal of Media Art Study and Theory, 1(1), pp. 8-13.
Barker, T. (2020) Video: aesthetics/agonism/anti-dialectics. In: Filimowicz, M. and Tzankova, V. (eds.) Reimagining Communication: Mediation. Routledge, pp. 55-69. ISBN 9781138498907 (doi: 10.4324/9781351015431-4)
2019
Barker, T. , Bisschoff, L. and Watson, L. (2019) Game On, Africa! [Exhibitions]
Barker, T. (2019) Time and the problems of television: three images. Philosophies, 4(3), 52. (doi: 10.3390/philosophies4030052)
Barker, T. (2019) Cultural techniques of play: a media philosophical approach to the study of time, history and memory in games. Configurations, 27(1), pp. 87-110. (doi: 10.1353/con.2019.0003)
Barker, T. (2019) Philosophies of Time, Media and Contemporaneity [Guest Editor]. Philosophies, 4,
2018
Barker, T. (2018) Against Transmission: Media Philosophy and the Engineering of Time. Bloomsbury: London. ISBN 9781474293099
Barker, T. (2018) Television in and out of time. In: Hoskins, A. (ed.) Digital Memory Studies: Media Pasts in Transition. Routledge: New York, pp. 173-189. ISBN 9781138639379
2017
Barker, T. (2017) Experiments with time: the technical image in media art and the digital humanities. Visual Communication, 16(4), pp. 375-394. (doi: 10.1177/1470357217702360)
Barker, T. (2017) Media in and out of time: German media science and the concept of time. In: Markham, T. and Rodgers, S. (eds.) Conditions of Mediation: Phenomenological Perspectives on Media. Peter Lang: New York, pp. 125-134. ISBN 9781433134708
Barker, T. (2017) Sean Cubitt, The Practice of Light: A Genealogy of Visual Technologies from Prints to Pixels. Screen, 58(3), pp. 375-378. (doi: 10.1093/screen/hjx031)[Book Review]
2015
Barker, T. and McKeown, C. (2015) Unearthing techno-ecology: on the possibility of a technical media philosophy of ecology. Digital Culture and Society, 1(1), pp. 21-38. (doi: 10.14361/dcs-2015-0103)
Barker, T. (2015) Media ecology in Michel Serres’ Philosophy of Communication. Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 19(1), pp. 50-68. (doi: 10.5840/techne201532327)
2013
Barker, T. (2013) Experimental research in the digital media arts. In: Chan, J. and Thomas, K. (eds.) Handbook of Research on Creativity. Edward Elgar: Cheltenham, UK. ISBN 9780857939807
Barker, T. (2013) Recomposing the digital present. In: Groom, A. (ed.) Time. Series: Documents of contemporary art. Whitechapel Gallery and MIT Press: London ; Cambridge, Mass.. ISBN 9780854882151
2012
Barker, T.S. (2012) Becoming Organ-ized: The Creativity of Organization, Dis-Organization and Re-Organization in Scientific and Artistic Experiments. Leonardo: Art Science and Technology, 45(3), pp. 262-268. (doi: 10.1162/LEON_a_00369)
Barker, T. (2012) Images and eventfulness: expanded cinema and experimental research at the University of New South Wales. Studies in Australasian Cinema, 6(2), pp. 111-123. (doi: 10.1386/sac.6.2.111_1)
Barker, T.S. (2012) Information and the atmosphere: exploring the relationship between the natural environment and information aesthetics. M/C Journal, 15(3),
Barker, T.S. (2012) Time and the Digital: Connecting Technology, Aesthetics, and a Process Philosophy of Time. Series: Interfaces, studies in visual culture. Dartmouth College Press: Hanover, NH. ISBN 9781611682991
2011
Barker, T. (2011) The past in the present: understanding David Claerbout's temporal aesthetics. Time and Society, 20(3), pp. 286-303. (doi: 10.1177/0961463X10375103)
Brown, N.C.M., Barker, T.S. and Del Favero, D. (2011) Performing digital aesthetics: the framework for a theory of the formation of interactive narratives. Leonardo: Art Science and Technology, 44(3), pp. 212-219. (doi: 10.1162/LEON_a_00165)
Barker, T. (2011) Aesthetics of the error: media art, the machine, the unforeseen and the errant. In: Nunes, M. (ed.) Error: Glitch, Noise, and Jam in New Media Cultures. Continuum: New York, USA. ISBN 9781441121202
Barker, T. (2011) Experiments with time: technology, art and temporality. In: NIEA Experimental Arts Conference, Sydney, Australia, 19-20 Aug 2011,
Barker, T. (2011) Objects and interaction. Digital Creativity, 22(2), pp. 65-77. (doi: 10.1080/14626268.2011.578579)
Barker, T. (2011) Re-composing the digital present. Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture, 1(1), pp. 88-104. (doi: 10.5195/contemp.2011.13)
2010
Barker, T. (2010) Interactive aesthetics: iCinema, interactive narratives and immersive environments. In: 15th Biennial Conference of the Film and History Association of Australia and New Zealand, Sydney, Australia, 30 Nov - 3 Dec 2010,
Barker, T. , Del Favero, D. and Hardjono, A. (2010) Memory process and frontier technology. In: War, Literature and the Arts Conference, Colorado Springs, CO, USA, 16-18 Sept 2010,
Barker, T. and Hardjono, A. (2010) T_Visionarium and scenario. In: University of New South Wales (UNSW) International Research Week, Sydney, Australia, 5-7 Sept 2010,
Del Favero, D. and Barker, T.S. (2010) Scenario: co-evolution, shared autonomy and mixed reality. In: IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality, Seoul, South Korea, 13-16 Oct 2010, (doi: 10.1109/ISMAR-AMH.2010.5643299)
2009
Barker, T. (2009) A.N. Whitehead and digital aesthetics. In: Creative Margins Conference, Perth, Australia, 5-6 Nov 2009,
Barker, T. (2009) Process and (mixed) reality: a process philosophy for interaction in mixed reality environments. In: IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality, Orlando, FL, USA, 19-22 Oct 2009, (doi: 10.1109/ISMAR-AMH.2009.5336731)
Barker, T. (2009) Towards a process philosophy for digital aesthetics. In: 15th International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA), Belfast, UK, 23 Aug - 1 Sept 2009,
Barker, T. (2009) Writing a media art history. In: Writing Intersections Conference, Melbourne, Australia, 18-19 Nov 2009,
2008
Barker, T. (2008) The error and the event. Vector (e-zine), X06,
2007
Barker, T. (2007) Adapting a model of duration: the multi-temporality of T_Visionarium II. M/C Journal, 10(2),
Barker, T. (2007) Error, the unforeseen and the emergent: the error in interactive media art. M/C Journal, 10(5),
2006
Barker, T. (2006) The affect of deep sleep within duration: temporality, narrativity, and interactivity within the affective medium of interactive cinema. In: Art Association of Australia and New Zealand Conference, Melbourne, Australia, 7-9 Dec 2006,
Barker, T. (2006) Pentimento, past, present and future: an interactive construction of memory. In: Rethinking the Past Conference, Sydney, Australia, 28-29 July 2006,
Articles
Barker, T. (2023) Unplayable games: time and digital culture. Kunsttexte, 2023(2),
Barker, T. (2023) Michel Serres and the philosophy of technology. Theory, Culture and Society, (doi: 10.1177/02632764221140825) (Early Online Publication)
Barker, T. (2021) The transcendental and the agonistic: a media philosophy perspective. Foundations of Science, 27(2), pp. 521-525. (doi: 10.1007/s10699-020-09761-2)
Barker, T. (2021) Michel Serres’ messengers. Media Theory, 5(1), pp. 163-184.
Barker, T. (2020) Between emergence and emergencies: an introduction to the special issue ‘Media, Materiality, and Emergency’. MAST: The Journal of Media Art Study and Theory, 1(2), pp. 3-22.
Barker, T. (2020) Special Issue: Media, Materiality and Emergency [Guest Editor]. MAST: The Journal of Media Art Study and Theory, 1(2),
Barker, T. (2020) Media philosophy. MAST: The Journal of Media Art Study and Theory, 1(1), pp. 8-13.
Barker, T. (2019) Time and the problems of television: three images. Philosophies, 4(3), 52. (doi: 10.3390/philosophies4030052)
Barker, T. (2019) Cultural techniques of play: a media philosophical approach to the study of time, history and memory in games. Configurations, 27(1), pp. 87-110. (doi: 10.1353/con.2019.0003)
Barker, T. (2019) Philosophies of Time, Media and Contemporaneity [Guest Editor]. Philosophies, 4,
Barker, T. (2017) Experiments with time: the technical image in media art and the digital humanities. Visual Communication, 16(4), pp. 375-394. (doi: 10.1177/1470357217702360)
Barker, T. and McKeown, C. (2015) Unearthing techno-ecology: on the possibility of a technical media philosophy of ecology. Digital Culture and Society, 1(1), pp. 21-38. (doi: 10.14361/dcs-2015-0103)
Barker, T. (2015) Media ecology in Michel Serres’ Philosophy of Communication. Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 19(1), pp. 50-68. (doi: 10.5840/techne201532327)
Barker, T.S. (2012) Becoming Organ-ized: The Creativity of Organization, Dis-Organization and Re-Organization in Scientific and Artistic Experiments. Leonardo: Art Science and Technology, 45(3), pp. 262-268. (doi: 10.1162/LEON_a_00369)
Barker, T. (2012) Images and eventfulness: expanded cinema and experimental research at the University of New South Wales. Studies in Australasian Cinema, 6(2), pp. 111-123. (doi: 10.1386/sac.6.2.111_1)
Barker, T.S. (2012) Information and the atmosphere: exploring the relationship between the natural environment and information aesthetics. M/C Journal, 15(3),
Barker, T. (2011) The past in the present: understanding David Claerbout's temporal aesthetics. Time and Society, 20(3), pp. 286-303. (doi: 10.1177/0961463X10375103)
Brown, N.C.M., Barker, T.S. and Del Favero, D. (2011) Performing digital aesthetics: the framework for a theory of the formation of interactive narratives. Leonardo: Art Science and Technology, 44(3), pp. 212-219. (doi: 10.1162/LEON_a_00165)
Barker, T. (2011) Objects and interaction. Digital Creativity, 22(2), pp. 65-77. (doi: 10.1080/14626268.2011.578579)
Barker, T. (2011) Re-composing the digital present. Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture, 1(1), pp. 88-104. (doi: 10.5195/contemp.2011.13)
Barker, T. (2008) The error and the event. Vector (e-zine), X06,
Barker, T. (2007) Adapting a model of duration: the multi-temporality of T_Visionarium II. M/C Journal, 10(2),
Barker, T. (2007) Error, the unforeseen and the emergent: the error in interactive media art. M/C Journal, 10(5),
Books
Barker, T. (2018) Against Transmission: Media Philosophy and the Engineering of Time. Bloomsbury: London. ISBN 9781474293099
Barker, T.S. (2012) Time and the Digital: Connecting Technology, Aesthetics, and a Process Philosophy of Time. Series: Interfaces, studies in visual culture. Dartmouth College Press: Hanover, NH. ISBN 9781611682991
Book Sections
Barker, T. (2023) Media temporalities and the technical image. In: de Vaujanay, F.-X., Holt, R. and Grandazzi, A. (eds.) Organisation as Time: Technology, Power and Politics. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781009297257
Barker, T. (2021) Post-communication theory. In: Barker, T. and Korolkova, M. (eds.) Miscommunication: Mistakes, Errors, Media. Series: Thinking media. Bloomsbury Academic: New York ; London, pp. 46-60. ISBN 9781501363856
Barker, T. and Korolkova, M. (2021) Introduction: bad operators. In: Barker, T. and Korolkova, M. (eds.) Miscommunication: Mistakes, Errors, Media. Series: Thinking media. Bloomsbury Academic: New York ; London, pp. 1-22. ISBN 9781501363856
Barker, T. (2020) Video: aesthetics/agonism/anti-dialectics. In: Filimowicz, M. and Tzankova, V. (eds.) Reimagining Communication: Mediation. Routledge, pp. 55-69. ISBN 9781138498907 (doi: 10.4324/9781351015431-4)
Barker, T. (2018) Television in and out of time. In: Hoskins, A. (ed.) Digital Memory Studies: Media Pasts in Transition. Routledge: New York, pp. 173-189. ISBN 9781138639379
Barker, T. (2017) Media in and out of time: German media science and the concept of time. In: Markham, T. and Rodgers, S. (eds.) Conditions of Mediation: Phenomenological Perspectives on Media. Peter Lang: New York, pp. 125-134. ISBN 9781433134708
Barker, T. (2013) Experimental research in the digital media arts. In: Chan, J. and Thomas, K. (eds.) Handbook of Research on Creativity. Edward Elgar: Cheltenham, UK. ISBN 9780857939807
Barker, T. (2013) Recomposing the digital present. In: Groom, A. (ed.) Time. Series: Documents of contemporary art. Whitechapel Gallery and MIT Press: London ; Cambridge, Mass.. ISBN 9780854882151
Barker, T. (2011) Aesthetics of the error: media art, the machine, the unforeseen and the errant. In: Nunes, M. (ed.) Error: Glitch, Noise, and Jam in New Media Cultures. Continuum: New York, USA. ISBN 9781441121202
Book Reviews
Barker, T. (2017) Sean Cubitt, The Practice of Light: A Genealogy of Visual Technologies from Prints to Pixels. Screen, 58(3), pp. 375-378. (doi: 10.1093/screen/hjx031)[Book Review]
Edited Books
Barker, T. and Korolkova, M. (Eds.) (2021) Miscommunications: Errors, Mistakes, Media. Series: Thinking media. Bloomsbury Academic: New York ; London. ISBN 9781501363856
Conference Proceedings
Barker, T. (2011) Experiments with time: technology, art and temporality. In: NIEA Experimental Arts Conference, Sydney, Australia, 19-20 Aug 2011,
Barker, T. (2010) Interactive aesthetics: iCinema, interactive narratives and immersive environments. In: 15th Biennial Conference of the Film and History Association of Australia and New Zealand, Sydney, Australia, 30 Nov - 3 Dec 2010,
Barker, T. , Del Favero, D. and Hardjono, A. (2010) Memory process and frontier technology. In: War, Literature and the Arts Conference, Colorado Springs, CO, USA, 16-18 Sept 2010,
Barker, T. and Hardjono, A. (2010) T_Visionarium and scenario. In: University of New South Wales (UNSW) International Research Week, Sydney, Australia, 5-7 Sept 2010,
Del Favero, D. and Barker, T.S. (2010) Scenario: co-evolution, shared autonomy and mixed reality. In: IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality, Seoul, South Korea, 13-16 Oct 2010, (doi: 10.1109/ISMAR-AMH.2010.5643299)
Barker, T. (2009) A.N. Whitehead and digital aesthetics. In: Creative Margins Conference, Perth, Australia, 5-6 Nov 2009,
Barker, T. (2009) Process and (mixed) reality: a process philosophy for interaction in mixed reality environments. In: IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality, Orlando, FL, USA, 19-22 Oct 2009, (doi: 10.1109/ISMAR-AMH.2009.5336731)
Barker, T. (2009) Towards a process philosophy for digital aesthetics. In: 15th International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA), Belfast, UK, 23 Aug - 1 Sept 2009,
Barker, T. (2009) Writing a media art history. In: Writing Intersections Conference, Melbourne, Australia, 18-19 Nov 2009,
Barker, T. (2006) The affect of deep sleep within duration: temporality, narrativity, and interactivity within the affective medium of interactive cinema. In: Art Association of Australia and New Zealand Conference, Melbourne, Australia, 7-9 Dec 2006,
Barker, T. (2006) Pentimento, past, present and future: an interactive construction of memory. In: Rethinking the Past Conference, Sydney, Australia, 28-29 July 2006,
Exhibitions
Barker, T. , Bisschoff, L. and Watson, L. (2019) Game On, Africa! [Exhibitions]
Grants
- 2015-2016: Leverhulme Research Fellowship: Analytical Media History
- 2013: Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland: Experimental Art, Time and Technology: A History of Experiments with Time in Media Art
- 2013: British Academy/Leverhulme Small Grant: Experimental Research in the Digital Humanities: Researching the New Methods in the Digital Humanities
Supervision
- Amey, Rob
A practise-based enquiry into the utilisation and integration of online communities, virtual reality and non-fungible tokens through contemporary film, animation, photography and performance. - French, Emma
Dungeons and Dragons as transformative fantasy - Yekti, Bharoto
Non-Visual Animation: Incorporating Touch in Expanded Animation
Teaching
- Mlitt Critical Theories of Digital Media (FTV5042)
- Histories of Digital Media (Hons) (FTV4082)
- Level 2: Spectatorship, Audiences and Identities (FTV2001)